Half of what you’re talking about (aka the charges) are a simple financial construct that can be changed at any time. In 20 years a government might simply decide to change the way things are charged, and if required take a hit to the budget bottom line – it’d probably make a great election promise. Or privatise parts of the network. Or who the f*ck knows.
10 years ago, most people didn’t have data on their phones, and for those of us that did, it was pretty bloody expensive. 20 years ago most people didn’t even have dial-up 28.8kbps internet at home, and we were using Token Ring networks, and coax networks and Banyan Vines, and running 486DX2 66Mhz computers. 30 years ago, most of that didn’t even exist. You guys are arguing about little short-term implementation details in an infrastructure project that’s supposed to last 50+ years. Sure things could potentially be improved. But that’s not seeing the forest for the trees. If we argued like this about the copper network, it would never, ever have been built. The enormous benefits that widespread internet access has provided to society would never, ever have been factored into the “business case” for the copper network – because the internet didn’t even exist at the time. So, we should not have bothered building that network? That would have been a stupid decision. Cheers Ken From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of David Connors Sent: Wednesday, 13 November 2013 3:59 PM To: ozDotNet Subject: Re: NBN Petition On 13 November 2013 11:14, Ken Schaefer <k...@adopenstatic.com<mailto:k...@adopenstatic.com>> wrote: Even over 20+ years? I don’t think, 20+ years ago we had any real idea how compute, storage, network and other infrastructure technologies were specifically going to fall in cost per unit, but they have been rather relentlessly. I think using the progress made in IT in general over the past two decades as a yard stick for a government monopoly removing a tax on Ethernet switching is pretty wishful thinking. Especially when their business plan has no intention or timeline for sunsetting the charges. The worst outcome from their review, I think, could be some sort of token reduction in CVC (say $20 down to $10) so the government can pretend it has been dealt with and move on. Even then moving data across the CBD would be 1000% more expensive than moving it to Japan. There is a bunch of other structural stuff in NBN which is bizarre (121 POIs, for example) ... dunno if any of that will get dealt with. I like Hackett's suggestion of going back to 7 POIs with full redundancy rather than 121 POIs with no redundancy. It is going to be a party when one of those 121 POIs burn down. As Hackett (I think it was him - might have been Malone) - the NBN's pricing model is constructed on the principle of scarcity, which the opposite is true. David.
